Hi everyone!
It's time to get to know another one of our wonderful WikiTreers. This week's member is Shaun Boyle.
Shaun became a Wiki Genealogist in April 2021. He is the Project Coordinator for our Iowa Project.
How did you get interested in genealogy?
I am an adoptee, and so I started getting interested in genealogy as a way to learn about the heritage of my adoptive family, not knowing much (e.g. almost anything) about my biological family. One of my mom's cousins had traced their shared family line deep into England and shared some of his research with the family. What really got me started on my own family history journey was a booklet from a family reunion for my dad's dad's mom's family. Someone in that line had traced the ancestry back a couple generations deep into Sweden, as well as included all the cousins and their descendants, though there were some errors in their documentation, including my birthday.
What are some of your interests outside of genealogy?
I learned Swedish through DuoLingo to be able to read some letters written by some of my grandfather's cousins that got passed down from that generation. I also volunteer with a number of non-profits, though usually have one at any given time that gets most of my attention. My wife and I have a very active son, who keeps us busy with attending sports, school activities, and church activities.
What is your genealogical research focus?
My current genealogical research focus is consolidating my research into WikiTree. While doing so, I am making sure I have solid sources for my information and telling the story of these relatives the best I can from the records available. I have recovered stories that had been lost from as recently as 1916. The joy of making new discoveries or recovering information that had been lost to history is what drives my research.
Are you interested in certain surnames or locations?
My family surnames of interest are Rogers, Foster, Stroup, Antrim, Wiuff, Hansen (my side), Boscaljon, Britt, Zigtema, Anstett, Redmond (wife's side). My family has been in Iowa for as many as six generations, coming from Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, England, and the Netherlands.
Do you have a favorite ancestor?
I think my "favorite" ancestor that I've researched, but never met was my great-great-grandfather, Irvin Allen Stroup (1862-1944). He moved from upstate New York to a small railroad town in Iowa to become a teacher. In the course of his career and 82 years, he helped start a church that will turn 125 this year; had a dance hall that he converted into a roller skating rink; a grocery business that ended up getting sold a couple times and may be my closest connection to a president; helped start a bank that folded in the 1920s, and helped establish a radio and battery business with his son. Their family plot is also interesting, as it contains his and his wife's grave, his stillborn grandson's in front of him, his daughter and her first husband (who died young) next to the grandson, and the first husband's parents behind the daughter and son-in-law.
What is your toughest brick wall currently?
My toughest brick wall is probably my wife's ancestor that immigrated to the U.S. from the Netherlands. We have found a birth record with his mother's name, but no additional information. I have also had some trouble with my great-grandfather's line, partly because his dad died when my great-grandfather was 5. The last name was Rogers, and the state of his birth did not require birth certificates at the time. Fellow genealogists on the G2G forum have helped me with some newspaper records to extend back a couple more generations, so I may have some exciting new discoveries to report once I can dig in more there.
How long have you been on WikiTree?
I joined WikiTree in April 2021 in advance of a WikiTree Challenge for one of the genealogists that was a featured guest. I hadn't yet heard of WikiTree, so I was thrilled to find it met my budget, and loved some of the ways that we can present information about our ancestors. During one of the early challenges I participated on, I found so many records for people with the same name in a similar area of England that I created a space page in the hope that it would help people researching those others to disambiguate the different Harriet Wilkinsons I had found (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Harriet_Wilkinson_conflation_page). I continued to get involved because I saw the power behind being able to tell people's stories through this research.
What do you spend the most time doing on WikiTree?
Most of my time to date has been spent trying to expand my family tree on WikiTree. I have done quite a bit of research on Ancestry and a couple other sites, but want to be able to point to a single source that I can then share with my son, nieces, and nephews. Lately, I've been working on the Wiuff family, as my great-grandmother was one of about a dozen siblings, and this is the set of cousins I know very little about.
Which projects are you most involved in?
I was recently named project coordinator for the Iowa project. As part of that responsibility, I hope to not only increase the number of Iowa profiles on WikiTree, but also provide a robust page for each of Iowa's 99 counties with resource links to drill down into county-specific research. I have also been working with the Military and War project, with a particular focus on telling the stories of Medal of Honor recipients and trying to link them to the single family tree.
How can others help the Iowa Project?
Any geography-based project can use help, as most involve either a state/province or country, and there are a LOT of profiles to build to connect us all. I am still in the early stages of figuring out what is already present, but I hope that I can get some regional coordinators to help with lookups in a five- or six-county area, if needed. I have been working through the county pages, and have a short-term goal of establishing a category for each township in Iowa, as we've had a rich agricultural history where the townships were the smallest unit of government for many of the pioneers here.
What inspires you to contribute so much of yourself to WikiTree's mission?
I am inspired by reading some of the profiles of relatives that others have researched, learning more about their lives and what "made them tick." Although I have participated in several of the "thon" challenges, I typically try to at least have one source for the birth, marriage, and death before I move to the next profile. Everyone has a story, and the way we tell it depends on how well we know the person. My goal is to tell the stories of people who may not have relatives left that knew them, and tell it in a way that inspires others to learn more about their heritage.
What is your favorite feature or function on WikiTree?
I LOVE WikiTree Sourcer. It's a great way to cite sources in a consistent way, and the citation builder is helpful when working with paper documents and/or record sets that aren't on one of the search sites. Second place is the G2G forum. The number of exceptionally helpful people that are active there continues to astound me, especially when they help people either break down brick walls or debunk connections on other, unsourced trees. I've been learning more about WikiTree BEE, and while I'm still not sure I'm using it to its fullest, I am growing to like it more as well.
What feature or function would you most like to see added or improved?
I would like to see some more educational materials available to WikiTreers, both those dabbling and seasoned researchers, maybe in the form of videos on a WikiTree Education page. There are a lot of features available that I haven't even explored yet, and understanding those features can really help us improve our methods and our research. Younger generations, in particular, tend to be more visual learners, so having that visual component would help the next generations understand and grow our single family tree.
Do you have a story about how someone was helped through your participation on WikiTree?
I am currently working on some family history research for a friend of ours who recently lost his wife to a long-term illness. I was also able to complete a record lookup for a naturalization record here in Iowa. The original record was taken in Ohio, but was filed here in Iowa, and now housed at the Iowa Genealogical Society in their closed stacks. I was able to get a copy and send it to the WikiTreer that had taken on the Secret Santa challenge for that person's descendant.
Do you have a story about how you were helped through the work of others on WikiTree?
I have had some very generous WikiTreers provide me with information about some of the Swedish ancestors in my adopted family, and others that have greatly expanded my knowledge of my biological family through the Adoption Angels program. I was happy to be able to report that the conclusions the adoption angel had reached about my biological parents were validated by the original birth certificate I was able to obtain about the same time. (A great summer, for sure!)
Do you have any tips for someone who wants to get more involved in our community?
Dive in. We have a very helpful community. Start with what you know, put in research notes about the guesses/family stories that you haven't been able to validate, ask questions in the G2G forum, and be willing to help where you can. I predict that you will fall in love with the community here. I also predict that there will be many rabbit holes, many rewarding discoveries, and many questions asked, answered, and generated from the answers you find.
What could we do to inspire more people to participate in our mission?
Spread the word. People are eager to learn their connections to famous people, and WikiTree does a great job of connecting people to the single family tree. It's always my goal to guess which line of the family the connection will use.
What sets WikiTree apart from other genealogy sites?
I find that WikiTree has one of the best sets of tools available to present research. Each person's story can be told in a way that provides dignity to their lives, even if they had a number of challenging circumstances to overcome. While we might not ever come to a consensus about how to handle profiles for adoptees, non-biological parentage, etc., the stories of the people and their connections are what helped make us who we are. The community here is great, and an element that has been intentionally developed. We have the most helpful community of genealogists that I have found anywhere.
I also appreciate that WikiTree is committed to being a free service forever. The continual development of new features, new research tools, and new featured connections means there's always something more to discover. I've also found that I like the element of competition, so having a gamification piece to some of the challenges (connectors', thons, etc.) helps motivate me to spend more time working on creating more connections for more people.
